What are my options when it comes to fishing very shallow ground and needing to cover a hell of a lot of ground?

For obvious reasons I face the very real prospect of not spending a single day over in Ireland this year. From a guiding/work point of view it’s obviously not great, and from a fishing/photography point of view it’s not ideal either. In the grand scheme of things me losing a part of my income is nothing compared to what so many people are going through right now, but I guess this sodding virus is affecting us all in a bunch of different ways. It’s not affecting how I enjoy communicating with anglers I know though, and if there is one thing I love to hear about it’s other anglers and their own fishing and how they are going about it. Talking with the lad I do the guiding work with over in Kerry is always interesting on various different levels, and because their full time guiding business has been hit so hard this year, John has been out fishing himself far more than he would ever be able to in a normal year. Virtually nobody ever fishes around where he lives and guides and we can talk with each other so openly about different locations and so on. The fact that I have worked with clients on so many of these marks makes it all the more interesting for me when I talk with John because I also get such a good visual sense of what he’s describing.

I got a call a while back to say that there had been so many bass around for a few days that it almost wasn’t fair - my heart bleeds! - but that they still took some catching and thinking about because on one spot in particular the fish had not been doing what they usually do. You know how you get to know specific spots and how they tend to fish but then they go and throw a bit of a curveball from time to time? This particular mark is a great big shallow reef that tends to work well on the bigger tides when it’s calm and the water has had the chance to warm up over the rocks. Catch it right and you can usually get a few bass in amongst a lot of mullet mooching around, and for the most part these bass are in nice and tight to the shore. There is often a bit of weed around, it’s very shallow ground, and what tends to work well are soft plastics like the DoLive Stick rigged weedless and weightless.

I managed to get the grownups at Savage Gear to send John a bunch of sample soft plastics that we have been working on, and talking with him about how he has been fishing them so effectively for his local bass has been fascinating. I know he had a 72cm bass the other night on one of these new soft plastics and it makes my day to hear about stuff like this when I have been so closely involved with developing these lures. As well as these lures cast though, and of course the DoLive Stick and Albie Snax lures and so on get out there really well for soft plastics rigged weedless and weightless, John was telling me how this particular reef was looking so good the other day but that the usual approach as such wasn’t working. He could see no reason why there weren’t bass around, but for some reason they weren’t doing their usual thing…………….

I first saw these Line-Thru Sandeels being used in the surf

And he found the bass a lot further out, and I mean way beyond where any of us could put any of these soft plastics we might fish on weedless hooks. For some reason I haven’t found that this spot responds that well to surface lures (too shallow?), and they often pick up a bit of surface weed anyway. As far and as shallow as something like the amazing IMA iBorn 118F or the tried and trusted Komomo SF-125 hard lures cast and swim, John found that yet again it was the Savage Gear Pencil 125 and how far it goes plus how shallow it can swim which did the trick. I have blogged about these lures a fair bit now and in some respects I feel the need to apologise because of my working with Savage Gear these days and my talking about them might sound like marketing speak, but John was not sent any of these lures and I know he bought them fair and square. I can threaten him with violence but at the end of the day I can’t make him use these lures, so when he does I sure do find it interesting to understand more about how he’s fishing them and over what kind of ground and so on. I know it’s happened a few times now where they have found a stack of bass far further out on this reef than they normally do, and each time it’s been these Sandeel Pencils in the 125 size which have done the trick. Yes there are other lures which I am sure will work in a similar way, but it’s how I’m made to be interested in other anglers and how they fish. John has a history of using the original Savage Gear Line-Thru Sandeels a lot with his clients, so the fixed-hook Sandeel Pencil version I guess was always going to appeal to him.

All kinds of weather going on here in Cornwall at the moment!

So I had a bit of a play myself this morning. I have fished a lot now with the three sizes of Sandeel Pencil lures, and I have had bass on all of them. As much as it doesn’t really matter if I lose the odd Savage Gear lure because I am doing some with them, I still don’t like doing so and I will do what I can not to lose lures. Mark and I took a bit of a punt on some very shallow ground this morning, in fact it’s remarkably similar in depth to this spot I was talking about over in Kerry. I didn’t end up fishing very much myself because the light got really good and I couldn’t put my camera gear down, plus I had my eyes on some ground I wanted to check out for night fishing. I gave this new HTO N70 Labrax Special 9’4’’ 7-42g lure rod (help!) to Mark and asked if he wouldn’t mind fishing with it so I could get some shots, and he landed the one bass of the morning on one of these new Savage Gear soft plastics which I believe will be in the shops soon and then I can reveal all and get it off my chest!

Anyway, my own brief bit of fishing this morning revolved mainly around me blasting out the Sandeel Pencil 125 and seeing how slowly I could fish it and not get snagged up on the very shallow and weedy ground - I didn’t lose a lure, indeed I didn’t even snag one up and have to wrench it out. I am not trying to tell you that this simple looking lure is the best thing since sliced bread, and I am also not saying that you can’t lose them over very shallow and snaggy ground - but it’s a lure which you can cover a hell of a lot of ground with, they are so easy to use - wind them in - and whatever subtle thing they are doing in the water obviously does it for the bass. I love a few shiny, shallow-diving hard lures as much as the next bass angler, but yet again with these subtle-action Sandeel Pencils and how they have worked for me over the last year or so, I can’t help but notice how less (action) seems so often to be more when it comes to catching bass. You all have a good Bank Holiday weekend…………….

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